Andrew Ross Sorkin on What 1929 Teaches Us About 2025

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Andrew Ross Sorkin on What 1929 Teaches Us About 2025

Host: David Remnick | Guest: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Release Date: November 14, 2025

---

Overview

In this episode, David Remnick interviews financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin about the lessons from the 1929 Wall Street Crash and how they parallel today’s economic climate, especially amid major investments in artificial intelligence, rising corporate leverage, and global tariff policies. The discussion explores whether we are on the edge of a new financial bubble and what policymakers, investors, and regular Americans can learn from the past.

---

Key Discussion Points

Comparisons Between 1929 and the Present (00:44–05:24)

• Economic Anxiety and AI: Remnick begins by contextualizing today’s financial optimism and fears, particularly how current market surges rely heavily on AI investments, echoing the speculative fervor of the late 1920s.
• Investor Euphoria: Sorkin draws direct lines between the "roaring" 1920s—fueled by new technologies like radio and automobiles—and today’s AI-driven boom.
  • Quote: "The 1920s is really what changed the way we live now … this euphoric moment is so similar to the 20s because we had automobiles, we had telecommunications, we had radio. People thought RCA was the Nvidia of its time." (03:19, Sorkin)
• Crisis Timing: The perennial challenge is not just recognizing a bubble but getting the timing right.
  • Quote: “It’s not just knowing that there’s going to be a correction of some sort or a crash. It’s getting the timing right and knowing when to get on, off and on the train again.” (10:26, Sorkin)

The Role of Leverage and Shadow Banking (05:24–09:48)

• Excessive Borrowing in AI Buildout: Sorkin warns that immense leverage underpins the current AI arms race—tech companies, energy, and real estate are all taking on risky debt to enable AI infrastructure, echoing dangerous patterns of the past.
  • Quote: "Every financial crisis, if I learned anything from covering 1929, covering 2008, it is leverage. It is people borrowing to make all of this happen." (05:55, Sorkin)
• Opaque Finance: Unlike past crises where borrowing was visible through banks, much current debt is hidden in the "shadow banking" system and private credit funds.
  • Quote: "Today, most loans are not coming from the banks anymore. They're coming from what's called the shadow banking system … There's no disclosure around it. We don't know about these funds." (08:18–08:43, Sorkin)

Market Risks and the AI Bubble (09:48–15:05)

• AI as the Growth Engine: Sorkin relays economist Jason Furman’s view that if all current spending on AI/data centers vanished, US growth would stagnate—demonstrating how dependent the economy is on this sector.
  • Quote: “If you were to eliminate all of the spending on data centers … the United States would have a growth rate of about 0.1%. Call it flat.” (11:15, Sorkin)
• How Bubbles Persist: Despite optimism, Sorkin cautions the current bubble could burst or simply continue evolving for years before unraveling, much like previous speculative eras.

Individual Investment Advice & Psychological Realities (09:48–13:58; 32:06–33:55)

• Staying in the Market vs. Holding Cash: Sorkin advises caution for those close to retirement but maintains that, historically, being a "professional optimist" pays off in the long run.
  • Quote: "If you have 30 years from now and you don't need the money, I like to believe that 30 years will be better 30 years from now than today." (13:21, Sorkin)
• Personal Position: Due to journalistic ethics, Sorkin only owns mutual funds, not individual stocks.
• Practical Tips: Suggests retirees keep 10–20% of assets liquid given market risks, but younger investors with long time horizons shouldn't panic.

The Political Economy: Tariffs, Industrial Policy, and Inequality (15:05–20:34)

• Tariffs and Industrial Policy: Sorkin critiques ongoing US tariffs, especially on cars, as efforts to sustain industries that might otherwise fail—questioning their long-term wisdom.
  • Quote: “We’re trying to prop up industries and parts of our economy through tariffs that economically naturally shouldn’t be propped up.” (15:08, Sorkin)
• Competition with China: Acknowledges Chinese EVs (e.g., BYD) surpass American offerings in quality and price, raising existential questions for US manufacturing.
• Business Elite Sentiment: The financial elite, once opposed to tariffs, are slowly accepting them as permanent fixtures of a de-globalizing world.
  • Quote: “…Irrespective of what you think, the Supreme Court is going to do, that tariffs are now here to stay … that the next decade or two decades likely means that tariffs are going to be here.” (19:24, Sorkin)

Social Inequality and the Future of Capitalism (20:34–31:21)

• Populism and Perceptions of Capitalism: Remnick notes Trump’s ability to harness resentment over inequality; Sorkin contends elites are theoretically aware of this but struggle to genuinely act on it.
  • Quote: “I think they think about it and then try not to think about it. … The sweet meats are too delicious.” (23:35, Sorkin)
• Conspicuous Consumption: Today’s ultra-rich are far more ostentatious than in the 1920s, possibly exacerbating social resentments.
• American Dream as Lottery: The current era markets a lottery-ticket fantasy rather than gradual advancement, fueling disillusionment.
• Tax Reform Proposals: Sorkin suggests reforms to estate and capital gains taxation, and controversially, a tax on large-scale philanthropy to reduce tax avoidance.
  • Quote: “I would even think about a tax on philanthropy. … Most people who are giving their money to philanthropy today that are wealthy get a break, get a huge break.” (31:19, Sorkin)

Policy, Guardrails, and Systemic Risk (25:12–27:47)

• Parallels with Past Leaders: Sorkin compares Trump’s tariffs to Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley tariffs—both used protectionist policies for political gain with damaging effects.
• Who Governs the Economy? The markets themselves may be the most powerful check on presidential impulses.
  • Quote: “The president’s maybe worst impulses seem to be improved when Scott Bessen gets in the room. … It may very well be that the market is his guardrail.” (27:01, Sorkin)

The Next Generation and “Affordability Crisis” (28:11–30:00)

• Youth Disillusionment: Many young people now favor “socialism” over “capitalism,” reflecting deep doubts about opportunity and class mobility.
  • Quote: “It’s about what the American dream even is and whether you think you can do better than your parents … right now … what’s being sold … is very much this lottery ticket, get rich quick fantasy.” (28:11–28:29, Sorkin)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI Spending:
  “If you were to eliminate all of the spending on data centers, effectively all the money that's going to Nvidia … the United States would have a growth rate of about 0.1%. Call it flat.” (11:15, Sorkin)
• On Wealth and Inequality:
  “I think they think about it and then try not to think about it. … The sweet meats are too delicious.” (23:35, Sorkin)
• On Being a Cautious Optimist:
  “It has paid a lot more to be a professional optimist. And that is the hardest part about this.” (33:55, Sorkin)
• On Tariffs Becoming Permanent:
  “There's a sense … that tariffs are now here to stay, that the world is moving in this direction of breaking globalization.” (19:24, Sorkin)
• On American Dream as Lottery:
  "What's being sold on the scroll of the American dream, whatever that is, is very much this lottery ticket, get rich quick fantasy. It is not this idea that if you do all the right things … it's gonna work out." (28:29, Sorkin)

---

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Highlights | |-----------|-------------------| | 00:44–05:24 | Framing today’s economy vs. 1929; AI-driven euphoria | | 05:24–09:48 | Leverage, shadow banking, and systemic risk in AI construction | | 09:48–13:58 | Stock market psychology, timing bubbles, investment advice | | 15:05–20:34 | US industrial policy, tariffs, and China competition | | 20:34–24:44 | Inequality, elite attitudes, historical comparisons | | 25:12–27:47 | Leadership, guardrails, and the lessons of 2008 vs. 1929 | | 28:11–31:21 | Millennial/Gen Z disillusionment, tax reform, vision for capitalism | | 32:06–33:55 | Practical investment approach for different life stages |

---

Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is measured but critical, blending Sorkin’s financial expertise with Remnick’s incisive questions. The mood is cautionary—history may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. Sorkin does not foresee immediate doom, but he warns that excessive leverage, overconfidence in technological revolutions, and persistent inequality make today’s exuberance fragile.

Main takeaway:
While today’s AI boom echoes the speculative excesses of 1929, and the invisible leverage behind it should concern us, history suggests optimism pays for patient investors—though caution is wise, especially for those close to retirement. Systemic reform, transparency in credit markets, and greater attention to inequality are urgently needed to avoid the mistakes of the past.

---

Transcript

[Ferragamo Sponsor]

This podcast is brought to you by Ferragamo. Every holiday season, we gather, laugh, and rediscover what makes this time of year so special. The sounds of shoes on the floor as guests arrive. The sparkle of the tree, the joy of dressing up. Let Ferragamo be a part of your holiday story. From the sculpted leather hug handbag and iconic Vara shoe to the timeless tramezza and sumptuous silks, each piece is crafted to be cherished season after season. Visit ferragamo.com for the perfect holiday gift.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm hearing the same murmurings about the economy that you are catchphrases like correction, bubble, crash, buy gold, reduce your exposure, or more bluntly, cash out. Since the beginning of the year, when Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the markets, even at record heights, had been in turmoil. And if Trump had gone through with all his most unpredictable and punitive tariffs, we might have faced real disaster, a major recession.

[Interviewer]

But he didn't.

[David Remnick]

Not quite. And the market stabilized over the year.

[Interviewer]

In fact, they've been surging lately.

[David Remnick]

That has some people worried about a threat that could be bigger still. They worry that the economy and its expansion is so dependent on the realm of artificial intelligence, with all its fantastical prospects and unknowns, that we might be in trouble and very soon. Just the other day, Sam Altman seemed to suggest that companies like OpenAI might need a government bailout, and that caused a furor. Altman quickly walked that statement back.

[Unidentified Commentator]

In some level, like at some level, when something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we've seen in various financial crises and insurance companies screwing things up. So I guess given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, sort of, I do think the government ends up as like the insurer of last resort.

[David Remnick]

I'm no expert on what's happening here, but Andrew Ross Sorkin certainly is. If you follow finance. You know, Sorkin is the co anchor of Squawkbox on cnbc. He also founded the New York Times business site Dealbook. Ross Sorkin's last book was too big to an account of the 2008 financial crash, and he's followed it with a deeply researched and terrifically readable book about the biggest crash of all time is called 1929.

[Interviewer]

Andrew, just after Donald Trump's tariff policy went into effect. He privately admitted that his economic plan could bring about a recession. Privately. But what he really wanted to do was avoid a depression. Talk about how the Great Depression not only defined the 30s, but. But shaped American politics for generations, even today.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, look, we had a crash in 1929 that was ultimately the first domino, if you will. And then in a series of horrible policy choices that led to 25% unemployment in 1932, 9,000 banks going out of business by 1933. But really a shift in terms of how people even thought about investing in. Some investors were generationally scarred. Never even touched the stock market ever again. By the way, the 1920s is really what changed the way we live now, what we're living through today, which oftentimes feels like a bubble. And this euphoric moment is so similar to the 20s because we had automobiles, we had telecommunications, we had radio. People thought RCA was the Nvidia of its time.

[Interviewer]

So are we sleepwalking into disaster? I read this extraordinary narrative of yours about the Depression and all these kind of well meaning, intelligent status giants, wealthy people who had actual millions of dollars.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There were some with billions.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And they all thought they were doing the right thing or that they could shove the disaster down the road. And then, as Hemingway tells us, little by little, then all at once, the disaster comes on my birthday, I should say October 29th.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think we are invariably headed towards some kind of correction, if not worse. And if you look at where our economy is today, given all the spending that's going on in artificial intelligence, somewhat indiscriminately, I would add, at valuations that are, you know, shocking, the rubber will meet the road at some point because.

[Interviewer]

It always does, or because now, uniquely, it's going to hit the road.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Because it always does, but it always does. When you have a confluence of things happening at the same time, you have this remarkable euphoria around a technology that's going to change the world. And invariably it likely will.

[Interviewer]

AI.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

AI. But the economics of that technology change in the world may not all happen at one time. And so you have a remarkable period of spending, but not necessarily the revenue and profits on the other end to make it all work. And then, more importantly, you have a remarkable amount of leverage in the system. Every financial crisis, if I learned anything from covering 1929, covering 2008, it is leverage. It is people borrowing to make all of this happen.

[Interviewer]

It's.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And right now we are beginning to see a remarkable period of borrowing to make the economics of AI work Map.

[Interviewer]

Out the specifics and the scale of what's been going on. Why is the stock market over 45,000? What's the scale of the leveraging that's going on? Why are we in such peril? Who's doing the borrowing?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Some of the big tech companies, whether it's Google or Meta or Amazon, they're all investing right now in Nvidia chips and other data centers. And they have real cash and they're making real money. By the way, they're now spending virtually, in some cases, in Meta's case, almost all the money that they're bringing in on these data centers. But increasingly, what's happening is there's a whole subset of companies that are emerging around this. So real estate companies, energy companies, by the way, energy to power these data centers. Huge. How are they doing that? Taking out extraordinary loans to build out the energy requirements to make all of this happen. A lot of where the leverage lies is in all of the real estate companies, construction companies, energy companies that are building the future, if you will. The question is, the people who are supposed to be paying for it may not be able to. So OpenAI, you know, just made $100 billion commitment to Nvidia. It doesn't have $100 billion to commit. So what's happened here? Nvidia said, you know what? We'll finance you. So effectively, Nvidia is giving OpenAI the money that OpenAI is going to give back to Nvidia.

[Interviewer]

Are you suggesting that's a scam? Or are you suggesting that the timing of the way leverage works and being paid back is such that it causes these disruptions, depressions, possibly, or corrections, More.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Optimistically, if you get to a terrible moment, it's the leverage which sucks the confidence out of the system. Because it's not just that there's a correction in the system, meaning it's not just that some of these stocks fall by 20 or 30%, it's that if you're leveraged, you owe three and four times that, then you can't come back. And you can't come back.

[Interviewer]

Is that where we are?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think that's where we are probably right now. The question that I have in my mind is I'm not sure we fully know where all the leverage is today.

[Interviewer]

I don't know what that means.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So, historically, companies and even individuals took loans largely from banks. They disclosed what those loans looked like. The Federal Reserve knew what those loans looked like. Today, most loans are not coming from the banks anymore. They're coming from what's called the shadow banking system. They're coming from what's called private credit funds.

[Interviewer]

Explain both of those things.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, so historically, you go to the bank, we give them our cash, and then they would take that cash and they would loan it out to a company that wants to go buy Nvidia chips. In the private credit business, let's say David Remick decides he's starting a private credit fund. He's going to. You're going to go around to some pension funds and say, give me a billion dollars for the next 10 years. You give me the billion dollars for 10 years, I'll give you back your billion dollars plus. Plus, arguably, you would then take that billion dollars and then loan it out to somebody and they would go buy the chips. There's no disclosure around it. We don't know about these funds. We don't know what's in them. We don't know how they're being valued or carried at any given moment. And the truth is that this private credit universe is, is connected back to the banks because so many of the banks help lever them up. If people can't pay their loan back, you could have a real credit crunch.

[Interviewer]

I would bet some huge proportion of the people listening to this or out in the world think, all I know is I've got a 401 and the market's at 45,000 or whatever it is, which is great. It keeps going up and up and up, so no worries. And along comes Andrew Ross Sorkin telling me, you better worry. But I don't know how to wrap my head around it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, so here's the problem, and I try to wrap my head around this. If you look over the past hundred years, the truth is that it has been much more profitable to be a professional optimist than a professional skeptic.

[Interviewer]

We're in it for the long run.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, look, Charles Merrill, who founded Merrill lynch back in 1928, told people to get out of the market. Now, you might think that was a brilliant thought, except for the fact that from the beginning of 1928 to September of 1929, the stock market went up 90%. It's not just knowing that there's going to be a correction of some sort or a crash. It's getting the timing right and knowing when to get on, off and on the train again.

[Interviewer]

Your story about the Great Depression centers on a single bank merger that went wrong and that really helped to fuel the crash. Right now we're talking about Nvidia all the time.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

All the time.

[Interviewer]

How Much of our economic fate is in the hands of the narrative of Nvidia's destiny.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, I think hugely so. Jason Furman, who's an economist at Harvard, said if you were to eliminate all of the spending on data centers, effectively all the money that's going to Nvidia, if you will, the United States would have a growth rate of about 0.1%. Call it flat.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That's just a demonstration of how much our future to some degree is dependent on it. And also how much perhaps this AI bubble or growth rate is masking or papering over some of the other problems in our economy. There's an argument to be made that AI is going to be here just like radio was in the late 20s. By the way, here we are on the equivalent of radio right now. You look at similarly the Internet, late 90s. It wasn't that when the dot com bubble burst, it wasn't that the Internet was broken. It was just that the economics got out of whack and now we have a robust world that's based largely on the Internet. And I imagine something similar is going to happen in the world of AI.

[Interviewer]

Are you bullish on AI? Some people say that McKinsey, for example. McKinsey said nearly 80% of companies found it had no significant impact on their bottom line.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think currently in this moment, it hasn't had the sort of transformative effect that people are talking about. Do I think over time it will? Yes, I do.

[Interviewer]

I'm gleaning this conclusion from what we're talking about so far. A, we're in a bubble, but nevertheless, you should stay in the market. And B, you're heavily invested in AI because you think that's going to. It turned out just fine.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, first of all, I'm not invested in any of these things because the truth is, as a journalist who works at the New York Times and cnbc, I am not allowed to buy individual stocks.

[Interviewer]

So you stay in a fund or something.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

All I own is mutual funds and the like. Just to be 100% clear, because I want to be an independent actor. And I think that everybody needs to think through, you know, when and if you need cash. And if you need cash and you think in the next couple years you're gonna need cash, you'd like to think that you have some access, have some access to that. I don't like to give financial advice, but that's the truth. If you have 30 years from now and you don't need the money, I like to believe that 30 years will be better 30 years from now than today. And by the way, if I didn't think that it wouldn't be fun to be alive.

[Interviewer]

No, no, it wouldn't. But when you look at the situation that you lay out in terms of debt, in terms of AI, in terms of financial policy, we haven't even gotten to tariffs yet. How big is the bubble? How ready is it to burst and how would that look?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, the question in my mind is this could continue on for many, many years before it bursts. It doesn't have to burst tomorrow. In fact, I would argue that it's likely that there's going to be a whole number of iterations of continued growth for some period of time. I mean, right now, these big, large language model companies are investing almost religiously at this point. I mean, if you really ask them to sort of pencil out the math, most of them truly can't do it or are using very aggressive projections and effectively say, look, it's a trade off. There's one alternative is that we don't invest enough and we don't want to be behind. And the other is maybe we'll invest too much. But some prefer to think that that's the better path.

[Interviewer]

What troubles you the most?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We're trying to prop up industries and parts of our economy through tariffs that economically naturally shouldn't be propped up. However, there's some real questions about what you would do otherwise. If we didn't have tariffs on cars, for example, in America, we probably wouldn't have a car industry right now that.

[Interviewer]

The Chinese car industry is so superior.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

BYD cars, which are EVs, electric vehicles in China are the gold standard. They are better than our cars, they are cheaper than our cars. And I think if most Americans had an opportunity to sit in the back of one of those cars, they would say, as you have, what is going on here? People including, by the way, Elon Musk, who makes Teslas, would tell you that those are remarkable cars. He's made the argument that without tariffs we would have a real problem. You may say we want to have an automobile industry, but we've decided there are certain industries we want to support and other industries that we don't. There's a real question mark, just long term about what we're doing. We're also obviously moving to a services economy. And by the way, the more this goes back to AI, the more the greater we have a services economy and the greater you think that that can potentially be under threat from AI, what do we have?

[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and the New York Times. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio.

[Ferragamo Sponsor]

This podcast is brought to you by Ferragamo. Every holiday season, we gather, laugh and rediscover what makes this time of year so special. The sound of shoes on the floor as family and friends arrive, the decoration of the tree, the joy of dressing up at Ferragamo. Holiday 2025 celebrates the beauty of these rituals, moments that feel timeless yet always new. From sculpted leather hug handbags in the iconic Vera shoe to the enduring tramezza and luminous silks, each piece is crafted to be cherished season after season. This holiday season, Ferragamo presents a new kind of nostalgia, where every moment becomes a scene worth remembering. Visit ferragamo.com for the perfect holiday gift.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm David Ramnick, and I've been speaking today with Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the leading observers of finance in our time. Sorkin has been covering business for more than 30 years, since before he'd even graduated from college. He's gained the clout to call out corporate practices that he thinks are harmful to the economy, for example, what were called inversion mergers, and after he did so, the federal government took action to make them more difficult. Sorkin has spent his life covering the economy in the here and in the now, but his new book is about the 1929 Wall Street Crash that led to the Great Depression. And yet some of the parallels to our own time are unmistakable.

[Interviewer]

I sometimes I watch you on television, read you in the New York Times, and I try to imagine the sheer number of financial and business elites that stream in front of you on a given day and on a year. And you know, everybody, you go to Davos, these people are over time comfortable with you. I want to get a sense of what they are talking about, not on the record. When they think about Donald Trump's tariff policy. Now, obviously not everybody thinks the same thing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Maybe the Overton window is shifting. I think in general they started by saying this was a terrible, terrible idea. I mean, I know people who are who talk privately about shipping certain products from the United States out of the United States to other places and back into the United States. I mean, people are moving stuff around for reasons that make no sense except that you can lower your tariff fee by doing sort of crazy things, right?

[Interviewer]

So how did the Overton window shift?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's a sense, irrespective of what you think, the Supreme Court is going to do, that tariffs are now here to stay, that the world is moving in this direction of breaking globalization, and that if the rest of the world is splintering, and by the way, we may be leading some of that splintering, that the next decade or two decades likely mean the tariffs are going to be here. And I think some of them are starting to accept that as a fate. And then, and this maybe goes to the Overton Window portion of it, they start to get supportive of it, or at least when they're as they're trying to get their head around it, they're trying to rationalize why this could somehow be a good thing, they start to say to themselves, okay, maybe we're actually going to create our own automobile industry, and that will create resilience, and maybe we're going to create a better pharmaceutical industry. I mean, I'm not arguing these are the right paths. I'm just suggesting that I think some of these people who historically were against these things seem to almost be softening over time a little bit around them.

[Interviewer]

I think it's inarguable that one of the reasons that Donald Trump ironically, maybe came to office is that he sensed radical income inequality and he had a vocabulary to play on it. No matter what you think of the sincerity of it, he knew how to speak to it better than the Democrats who had their own billionaire donors. By the way, is that cracking up that sense among working people, as evidenced by the election the other day, that maybe that support, that faith in Donald Trump to help working people is fading?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, look, I think some of the polls would suggest that there's real anxiety about what's happening in the economy. And so I think a lot of parts of the economy that the president, during his campaign said that he was going to fix has gone unfixed. And so the question is, where are we going to be in the midterms and where will we be in 2028? I don't necessarily look at this, you know, what took place on Election Day and say to myself that this was all a repudiation of Trumpism, because I think you look at some of those states and it's limited evidence. It's limited evidence at this point. It's not clear to me that the vote for Mondame, for example, was a repudiation of Trump as opposed to if you had voted for Trump, Cuomo.

[Interviewer]

You see a lot of some of the wealthiest people in America troop through your television studio. You report on them. Do they care much about radical income inequality, which is just hugely different than even the period that you were writing about in the 1920s and 30s.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do they care about it? That's a great question. I think that they tell themselves that they care about it. I don't know ultimately how thoughtful they are being about how to end inequality. And I think that they believe that capitalism with a capital C is the answer.

[Interviewer]

But wasn't capitalism and big capitalists a little different? Not to be naive about this, but I read your book and nobody rented out the city of Venice for their wedding.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Interviewer]

The conspicuous consumption was infinitely more modest, no matter how outlandish. The Great Gatsby existed in reality, for certain. But this business of the skybox view of life, it was not nearly what it is today.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, I think.

[Interviewer]

Doesn't anybody in that class have any sense that this could come to a terrible end one way or another?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think they think about it and then try not to think about it. I'm being as straight with you as I possibly can because the sweet meats are too delicious. Because they ultimately believe that ending inequality is also. Is an end to their. Potentially to their. An end to their affluence. For all the talk about increasing the size of the pie, I think they also recognize that there might only be one size of the pie and who's taking which piece is the question.

[Interviewer]

But they don't sense the resentment, much less hatred.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, I think that they. Oh, I think that they clearly get the resentment and the hatred. By the way, most of these people feel very alone in that way.

[Interviewer]

I see you wiping a tear away from the corner of your eyes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, no, I'm not. I'm just suggesting that. I think when you think about these. These people at the very top, I actually think they're very cognizant of the resentment. But I don't think.

[David Remnick]

Are they? We had the President of the United States.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Just had a Great Gatsby night.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It's almost like rubbing it in the face of the people that he at least pretends to be the champion of. This seems to be a lack of self knowledge all around.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Certain people have taken a position that they just don't care.

[Interviewer]

Is there any relationship in your mind after doing this book and working on it for so hard and for so long, is there any relationship between a Herbert Hoover figure and anyone now, whether it's Donald Trump or what have you?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, look, Herbert Hoover, oddly, there were sort of Trumpisms about them. Herbert Hoover implemented tariffs in 1930. Smoot Hawley tariffs. Why did he do that? He did that because in 1928, when he was running for president, he was desperate to get farmers to vote for him. It's actually very similar to what Trump was doing.

[Interviewer]

And one of your banker characters refers to it as asinine.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

As asinine. They thought it was a terrible idea. But he. Here he was in 28 trying to get the farmers to vote for him, and he says, I'm going to put tariffs in place. We get to 1930, and he thinks, I need to make good on the pledge. One of the things that I'm fascinated by is the transition of power between Hoover and Roosevelt. Hoover, desperately, after he lost the election, wanted to rescue the banks. He wanted to bail out the banks. And he was secretly actually trying to talk to Roosevelt to get him to help him do this before he became the president. And, of course, Roosevelt wanted to have nothing to do with him because he wanted to start with a clean slate and didn't want to be connected to these things. And I think about that a lot, because if you go back and think about the crisis in 2008, there was the transition from Bush to Obama, and it was critical. It was actually super important that they were talking to each other and frankly, trying to help each other. And I continue to wonder, in this polarized world that we live in today, oh, that's possible. If, in fact we ever get to a crisis and we are in a transition, is it gonna look like 2008, Obama and Bush, or is it gonna look like Biden and Trump?

[Interviewer]

Who are the responsible people in charge in Washington today, in the administration? Who do you have faith in, if any?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I like to believe that Scott Besant is one of the adults in the room. The president's maybe worst impulses seem to be improved when Scott Bessen gets in the room. Interestingly, I've been surprised that actually, if there's any governor over this president thus far, it seems that it may very well be the markets. You know, if you think about it, after the tariffs were first announced back in April, it was the bond market that really went wild and forced his hand, and he really did sort of downshift. Similarly, even just a couple of weeks ago, he had announced these 100% tariffs on China. The equity market went crazy, and he downshifted again. Are there any guardrails? It very well could be that the market is his guardrail.

[Interviewer]

One of my colleagues, John Cassidy, recently published a book about a history of the critics of capitalism from Adam Smith, in fact, who in some ways was a critic of capitalism as well as a. A Creator of it all the way to the present day. If you look at polls of young people, you see that the word capitalism loses out to the word socialism. What does that mean?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think what it means is that people don't think that they can get ahead right now. I mean, Mamdani, I think, has done a great job of describing it as an affordability crisis, but I think it's so much more. I think it's about what the American dream even is and whether you think you can do better than your parents.

[Interviewer]

Did or even the same.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Or even the same. I think prior to the 1920s, the American Dream really was this sort of Horatio Alger story, this sort of rags to riches opportunity. And in the 1920s, they thought the only way in was this lottery ticket. And the truth is most people who buy a lottery ticket lose. And that was the truth in the twenties of the stock market. And I think right now, if you go on your iPhone and you go onto TikTok or Instagram, what's being sold on the scroll of the American dream, whatever that is, is very much this lottery ticket, get rich quick fantasy. It is not this idea that if you do all the right things, if you go to school and you work hard, you got to split level, it's gonna work out. It's not clear to me that breaking up the big tech companies necessarily or taxing the wealthy per se, not even a little bit. Well, I have a view we're changing the tax code. So I desperately think that there's things that are terribly mistaken about the tax code before you even have to think about a wealth tax. I think there are so much low hanging fruit in the system that frankly would probably raise even more money than a wealth tax. So the estate tax has to be fixed. The idea that people can transfer extraordinary amounts of money to their heirs right.

[Interviewer]

Now, dodging all taxes and dodging all.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Sorts of taxation, I mean capital gains taxes, we have a lower capital gains tax ostensibly to incentivize investment. But the wealthiest people in the world are still going to invest if there is a higher tax on their capital gains, because where else are they going to put their money? Some of the things going on in real estate, I mean, the reason why the real estate industry, which Trump has lived in for as long as he has, it's extraordinary. Some of the ways you're able to dodge taxes in that space by effectively depreciating assets at a time when the value of those assets continue to go up. I would even think about a tax on philanthropy. I Know, people think that this is completely wild and crazy, but most people who are giving their money to philanthropy today that are wealthy get a break, get a huge break. And it means that all of us are subsidizing their philanthropy, their particularized philanthropy. Warren Buffett has made hundred plus billion dollars. All of that money will never get touched or taxed in any way because he is moving it into charity. He's taking those shares, he's never selling them.

[Interviewer]

So he determines its fate.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And he determines its fate. I would think it would not be completely crazy to say, you know what? Every year, if you want to give away $5 million of shares without any taxes short, but after that, you have to sell the shares, the government gets to collect the tax, and you can then take that money if you'd like and donate it to a charity. Now, by the way, the nonprofit world thinks what I'm saying is horrible.

[Interviewer]

Presidents of libraries and symphony halls and.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Hospitals and all sorts of things that are well meaning, I don't want to take away from it. But the truth is there's a lot of money that effectively, because of all of these maneuvers, goes untouched.

[Interviewer]

Finally, Andrew, some people sell out of the market when it gets volatile, no matter what people are telling them to do. I've heard of hedge fund managers investing in gold. Yes, you've done extensive research into what people did before and during the stock market crash of 1929. I know you'll be a little oopsy about answering such a question, but what's the Andrew Ross Sorkin investment strategy right now? What does your investment portfolio look like these days? Or did you stay for journalistic reasons? Agnostic.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

For journalistic reasons. I try to be agnostic myself, but if you're my parents who are retired, they're in the late 70s, early 80s. I wouldn't want them to be fully invested in this moment.

[Interviewer]

You want them to have enough cash?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I want them to have 10 or 20% of whatever they have in something that's quote unquote liquid. So that if something bad happens in the stock market, is that because of.

[Interviewer]

Now or because of always? Because of their age?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, probably a combination of both. But I think in this particular moment, I think it's probably a little bit more acute given how out of balance it does seem the stock market is historically.

[Interviewer]

And if you're in your 40s or.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

50S, if you're in your 40s or 50t and you don't think you're gonna need the money, if you really don't think you're gonna need the money. And by the way, I'm in my 40s. I'm in my late 40s. I have kids, I have responsibilities and things. I think you could probably let it ride a little bit longer. But again, you know, I'm pretty cautious, so I like to have a little bit under the mattress. Having said that, as I've said, you know, I'm a journalist. I'm a professional skeptic. It has paid a lot more to be a professional optimist. And that is the hardest part about.

[Interviewer]

This Andrew Ross Sorkin thank you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Andrew Ross Sorkin is the founder of DealBook, the New York Times business site, and he's on CNBC's Squawk Box. Sorkin's new book is called 1929 The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History. For more on the economy, you can read the Financial page, our weekly column by John [e-mail] and of course, you can subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks so much for joining us. See you next time.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan and Alejandra Deckett.

[David Remnick]

And we had additional help this week from John Delore.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.

[Ferragamo Sponsor]

This podcast is brought to you by Ferragamo. Every holiday season, we gather, laugh and rediscover what makes this time of year so special. The sounds of shoes on the floor as family and friends arrive, the scent of pine and candlelight, the decoration of the tree, the joy of dressing up and the quiet comfort of coming home. The holidays remind us that the simplest rituals become the most enduring. Every laugh, every arrival, every sparkle of the season becomes a scene worth remembering at Ferragamo. Holiday 2025 invites us into a new kind of nostalgia, where the memories we'll create today become the ones we'll replay for years to come. From sculpted leather hug handbags and the iconic Vara shoe to timeless Tramezza craftsmanship and luminous silks, each piece is made to be Cherished season after season because at Ferragamo, every detail tells a story. This holiday season, Ferragamo presents a new kind of nostalgia where every moment becomes a scene worth remembering. Visit ferragamo.com for the perfect holiday gift.